1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to indexing displayed elements. More particularly, the present invention relates to a novel indexing scheme that is useful in such applications as learning a foreign language, for example a language based upon an ideographic alphabet, such as Japanese.
2. Description of the Prior Art
As the global economy turns the world's many nations into what media visionary Marshall McLuhan referred to as a global village, the need to learn and use new or specialized information, such as a language other than one's native language, becomes increasingly important. For example, there is a tremendous international demand for information related to Japan. Inside Japan, there is an abundance of information available in the Japanese language in numerous media forms. Japan has five national newspapers, seven major broadcasting networks, and several hundred book and magazine publishers. Japanese television focuses on the most obscure topics; and there are special interest magazines covering the full spectrum of Japanese society. Speakers of the Japanese language can find information on just about any topic imaginable. Unfortunately, outside of Japan this information is in short supply and the information that is available is primarily in English.
Individuals trying to learn about Japan are faced with the dilemma of either relying on English language sources or going through the pains of learning Japanese. English language information on Japan must go through the translation process. This results in time delays in obtaining necessary information, as well as in distortions in meaning. Furthermore, economics itself places restrictions on what information makes it's way into English and what information does not. For general and introductory information on Japan, the English-based media is providing a valuable service. But for people who want to do more than scratch the surface, such information is far from sufficient.
A large number of non-native speakers have sought to study Japanese in universities or in professional language schools. In recent years, the interest level in Japanese among first year level college students has soared, such that it is rated second only to Spanish in some surveys. The number of people studying Japanese in the mid-1980's in the United States was 50,000. This number has recently grown to 400,000 persons. But the study of Japanese language is plagued by the burdens of learning Kanji, the ideographic alphabet in which Japanese is written. Thus, the standing room only first-year Japanese language class in many universities soon becomes the almost private lesson-like third year class due to student attrition resulting from the difficulty of mastering Kanji.
The situation in Japan for foreigners is not much more encouraging. The cost of living in Japan poses a major barrier for both business people and students. There are currently over 300,000 United States citizens working or studying in Japan. But in recent years, foreign companies have been cutting their foreign staff. This, in part, has been in response to the enormous expense associated with maintaining them in Japan; but it is also a statement about the effectiveness of a large percentage of these people, who typically possess no Japanese language skills or background. Nevertheless, the necessity to do business in Japan is clear to most major United States companies, and access to Japan's inside information is critical to the success of such companies.
The situation in Japanese universities is also discouraging. There are currently about 30,000 foreign students in Japanese universities, compared to a total of over 300,000 foreign students studying in the United States. Ninety percent of the foreign students in Japan are from Asia, while there are less than 1,000 students in Japan from the United States. The cost of living and housing again contribute greatly to this disparity, but the language barrier must be seen as the prime hurdle that causes students to abandon the attempt to explore Japan. In the future, the desirability for students and researchers to work in Japan should increase due to the growth of “science cities” and the increase in the hiring of foreign researchers by Japanese corporations. The burden of studying Japanese, however, remains.
In total there are over 60,000 people enrolled in Japanese language programs in Japan; and according to the Japan Foundation, there are approximately 1,000,000 Japanese language students worldwide, with a total of over 8,200 Japanese language instructors in 4,000 institutes. However, without a more effective and productive methodology for reading Japanese and for building Japanese language vocabulary, the level and breadth of the information making its way to non-natives should not be expected to improve.
The foregoing is but one example of the many difficulties one is faced with when acquiring or using difficult or unfamiliar material. The first challenge anyone reading a difficult text, is faced with is the issue of character recognition and pronunciation. For example, a student of the Japanese language spends many frustrating hours counting character strokes and looking up characters in a dictionary. Challenges such as this are the primary reason so many people give up on Japanese after a short trial period. It is also the reason that people who continue to pursue the language are unable to build an effective vocabulary.
Knowing the “yomi” or pronunciation or reading of a word is essential to memorize and assimilate the word into one's vocabulary. This allows the student to read a word in context and often times deduce its meaning. But in many cases, the word may be entirely new to the reader, or it may be a usage that the reader has never seen. Looking up the word in the dictionary or asking a native speaker are the only options available to a student. Once the yomi for the word is known, i.e. the meaning and understanding of the word in context, the final challenge is to memorize the word and make it a part of a usable vocabulary.
The sheer number of characters in ideographic alphabets, such as Kanji, presents unique challenges for specifying and identifying individual characters.
Various schemes have been proposed and descriptions can be found in the literature for the entry of Kanji characters into computers and the like.
See, for example, Y. Chu, Chinese/Kanji Text and Data Processing, IEEE Computer (January 1985); J. Becker, Typing Chinese, Japanese, and Korean, IEEE Computer (January 1985); R. Matsuda, Processing Information in Japanese, IEEE Computer (January 1985); R. Walters, Design of a Bitmapped Multilingual Workstation, IEEE Computer (February 1990); and J. Huang, The Input and Output of Chinese and Japanese Characters, IEEE Computer (January 1985).
And, see J. Monroe, S. Roberts, T. Knoche, Method and Apparatus for Processing Ideographic Characters, U.S. Pat. No. 4,829,583 (9 May 1989), in which a specific sequence of strokes is entered into a 9×9 matrix, referred to as a training square. This sequence is matched to a set of possible corresponding ideographs. Because the matrix senses stroke starting point and stroke sequences based on the correct writing of the ideograph to be identified, this system cannot be used effectively until one has mastered the writing of the ideographic script. See, also G. Kostopoulos, Composite Character Generator, U.S. Pat. No. 4,670,841 (2 Jun. 1987); A. Carmon, Method and Apparatus For Selecting, Storing and Displaying Chinese Script Characters, U.S. Pat. No. 4,937,745 (26 Jun. 1990); and R. Thomas, H. Stohr, Symbol Definition Apparatus, U.S. Pat. No. 5,187,480 (16 Feb. 1993).
A text revision system is disclosed in R. Sakai, N, Kitajima, C. Oshima, Document Revising System For Use With Document Reading and Translation System, U.S. Pat. No. 5,222,160 (22 Jun. 1993), in which a foreigner having little knowledge of Japanese can revise misrecognized imaged characters during translation of the document from Japanese to another language. However, the system is provided for commercial translation services and not intended to educate a user in the understanding or meaning of the text.
Thus, although much attention has been paid, for example, to the writing, identification, and manipulation of ideographic characters, none of these approaches are concerned with providing a language learning system. The state of the art for ideographic languages, such as Japanese, does not provide an approach to learning the language that meets the four primary challenges discussed above, i.e. reading the language (for example, where an ideographic alphabet is used), comprehending the meaning of a particular word encountered while reading the language, understanding the true meaning of the word within the context that the word is used, and including the word in a personal dictionary to promote long term retention of the meaning of the word. A system that applies this approach to learning a language would be a significant advance in bridging the gap between the world's diverse cultures because of the increased understanding that would result from an improved ability to communicate with one another. Such system would only be truly useful if it were based upon an indexing scheme that allowed meaningful manipulation and display of the various elements of the language.